Chapter 2 - THE SILVER ROSARY
“Why have you never told me she is our daughter?”
Alessandro’s voice did not echo in the vast marble hallway. It was too quiet, too grounded, carrying the weight of a man who had just felt the earth shift beneath his expensive leather shoes.
Rosa stopped breathing.
Her arms tightened around Lily, pulling the three-year-old flush against her chest. The little girl rested her chin on her mother’s shoulder, her dark eyes still fixed on Alessandro. Her tiny fingers gently rubbed the gold button she had just been handed.
“Mr. Moretti,” Rosa whispered, her voice trembling so violently she could barely form the words. “She is… she is just a maid’s daughter. You are mistaken.”
Alessandro did not move. He remained standing a few feet away, his dark, piercing eyes locked onto Rosa’s pale face.
“I am a man who deals in certainties, Rosa,” he said slowly. “I know the shape of my mother’s eyes. I know the silence of a woman who is terrified of being seen. And I know what happened four years ago in a basement in Red Hook.”
Rosa flinched as if she had been struck.
The color drained entirely from her face. She lowered her gaze, staring at the polished marble floor. Her mind raced, desperately searching for a lie, an excuse, a way out of the mansion before the truth destroyed the fragile safety she had built for her child.
But how could she lie to the Don of the Moretti family?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rosa forced out, though a single tear betrayed her, sliding down her cheek and landing on her coarse apron.
Alessandro took one deliberate step closer.
“Four years ago,” he began, his voice dropping to a low, intimate timber that made the hairs on Rosa’s arms stand up. “I was ambushed outside a warehouse. Three men. I took two of them down, but the third put a knife between my ribs.”
Rosa squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to go back to that night.
“I stumbled into the rain,” Alessandro continued, his gaze never leaving her. “I found an unlocked door in a basement apartment. I collapsed in the dark. And a woman found me.”
Lily squirmed slightly, patting her mother’s back. “Mama sad?”
“No, baby,” Rosa choked out, kissing the side of Lily’s head. “Mama’s fine.”
“The power had been cut in the storm,” Alessandro said softly. “I never saw her face. But I remember her hands. They were gentle. She stitched my side in the dark. She gave me water. She stayed by my side while the fever burned through me.”
He knelt slowly, bringing himself down to Rosa’s eye level.
“When I woke up the next morning, the storm had passed. I was alone. The woman was gone. But she left me alive.” He paused, his jaw tightening. “I searched for her for six months. I tore Brooklyn apart. I found nothing.”
Rosa finally looked up at him. Her chest heaved.
“Because she didn’t want to be found,” Rosa whispered, her voice cracking. “Because the men who were hunting you that night… they didn’t stop looking.”
Alessandro’s eyes darkened. “What do you mean?”
Rosa reached a trembling hand beneath the collar of her gray cotton uniform. She grasped a thin, silver chain and pulled it upward.
Dangling from the chain was a heavy, antique silver rosary.
Alessandro’s breath caught in his throat.
It was his rosary. The one that had belonged to his grandfather. The one he had pressed into the dark-haired woman’s hand that night in Brooklyn before he passed out from the pain.
“You left this in my hand,” Rosa wept softly. “I thought you were going to die. But when the sun came up, I looked out my basement window. The men who attacked you were still circling the block. But they weren't random thugs, Alessandro.”
She used his first name. It slipped out, raw and desperate.
“They were wearing your family’s crest on their jackets,” Rosa revealed. “It wasn't a rival family who attacked you. It was your own men.”
Alessandro froze. The revelation hit him like a physical blow. A traitor. For four years, a traitor had been sitting at his table, eating his food, shaking his hand.
“I knew if they found me, they would kill me for saving you,” Rosa cried. “When I realized I was pregnant, I panicked. I needed to hide. And the only place a traitor wouldn't think to look for me… was right under your roof. Cleaning your floors.”
Alessandro reached out. His large, calloused hand gently touched the silver rosary resting against Rosa’s collarbone. The contact sent a jolt of electricity through them both.
He had found her. After four years, the woman who had saved his life, the woman who had haunted his dreams, had been folding his linens.
“You are safe now,” Alessandro whispered fiercely. “I swear on my life, Rosa. No one will ever hurt you or Lily.”
“How touching.”
The voice dripped with venom, echoing from the top of the grand staircase.
Alessandro’s head snapped up.
Isabella Romano had not stayed in her room. She stood on the landing, her white silk robe wrapped tightly around her slender frame. Her beautiful face was twisted into a cruel, mocking smile.
She wasn't looking at Alessandro. She was staring directly at Rosa.
“A beautiful story of survival,” Isabella sneered, descending the stairs slowly. “A poor, terrified maid hiding in plain sight. It almost brings a tear to my eye.”
“I told you to go upstairs, Isabella,” Alessandro warned, his voice turning lethal.
Isabella ignored him. She reached the bottom step, holding something heavy and dark over her left arm.
“You think she came here to hide from your traitors, Alessandro?” Isabella laughed, a cold, brittle sound. “You think this is a fairy tale?”
She threw the heavy object onto the marble floor between them.
It was a thick, black wool men’s coat.
Rosa gasped, her eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated terror. She pulled Lily back, scrambling away from the garment as if it were a venomous snake.
“Where did you get that?” Rosa breathed.
Isabella smiled triumphantly. “I had my guards search the servant’s quarters while you were busy playing the victim in the hallway. You really should lock your closet, Rosa.”
Alessandro looked down at the coat. His brow furrowed in confusion.
“Is this the coat you were wearing that night in Brooklyn, Alessandro?” Isabella asked softly.
May you like
Alessandro stared at the garment. “No. I was wearing leather.”
“Exactly,” Isabella purred. She pointed a manicured finger at Rosa. “That coat belongs to the man who stabbed you. And your precious, innocent maid has been keeping it hidden in her room for four years.”
